REM and U2
I've always enjoyed music. At one time, I used to rail against boy bands and so on; I despised anything that smacked of manufacture.

At the ripe old age of thirty and a massive jazz freak whose I-Pod doesn't even contain any rock tracks, you might expect my attitude to have hardened even more. In fact, the opposite is true. Stuff such as the shitecuntery peddled by Simon Cowell and his ilk fails to register - I simply laugh it off if I happen to hear any of it on the radio (which rarely happens, since it's always on Radio 3 or Radio 4). After all, it's not actually music - it's a complete and utter joke and I think even the cynical Marketing Twats who think it up (actually, probably *especially* these Twats) must realize that it's utter, utter jizz.

What really gets to me is the reverence paid to two bands: REM and U2. People actually think that REM and U2 produce music of artistic merit. It's this that pains me beyond fucking belief. "The Edge" (I'm sorry, I think I'm going to have an aneurysm) even got into a "Guitar Heroes" thing on Channel 4 years ago. The Fucking "Edge". Jesus Harold Bishop Christ. Sorry, Mr McLaughlin, Mr Di Meola, Mr Holdsworth et al...no bugger outside of the decent music realm has ever heard of you three chaps -- but some tit with a goatee that looks like it came out of a Brazilian-waxing salon for Cheshire Wives registered on the "Guitar Hero" scale and he can't even play the bloody instrument beyond the level of a thirteen-year-old bedroom guitarist.

Don't even get me started on Michael Stipe. His voice makes me want to shove an ice pick through each of my eardrums. And the jangly, family-friendly guitar playing so beloved of REM makes me want to cry. Not in the same way that hearing Bill Evans playing "Noelle's Theme" or Jaco Pastorius playing "Continuum" make me want to cry: these are tears of pure, unalloyed despair.

The people who like these two bands - I've met a few of them - generally seem to be the kind of people who have no appreciation for music at all. They won't try anything new of their own volition. They drink whatever's advertised on the billboards (in a chain pub, naturally), wear whatever the new season in Top Shop or New Look dictates, and cut their hair according to whatever style the current heart-throb/hot bitch in [Insert Name of Generic Series on E4/BBC3 Here] is sporting. They are middle-of-the-road, staid, anodyne plodders whose musical "taste" reflects their lack of imagination and individuality.

REM and U2: The musical equivalent of magnolia paint.
(Dinting Arches, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 19:00, 17 replies)

U2 are worse than magnolia paint.
listened to the words to Elevation? A retarded child could write better lyrics.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 19:05, closed)

Dunno
I've always thought that using your own cultural tastes as a gauge of people's worth is pretty fucking childish, but there you go.
( wotofco pissing in your swimming pool, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 19:26, closed)

its something most people grow out of hopefully.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 19:44, closed)

REM manage to get half a dozen decent tracks onto each new album, plus some filler to make the CD heavier (otherwise it would be too light to play and probably fuck up your CD player or something). U2 manage about 2 decent tracks per album - the rest of the album is weighed down by their offshore tax receipts.
(Styubud, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 19:54, closed)

I was thinking about referencing the flaying of Marsyas
as an illustration of the fact that the dialogue between supposed high and low art is thousands of years old, but Independence Day is on and I can't be fucked.
( wotofco pissing in your swimming pool, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 19:55, closed)

It's all been going downhill since 1959....
(spleenspleenspleen coffeeflavouredsugarcoatednicotine, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 20:31, closed)

"At the ripe old age of 30"...
... you're too young to remember U2 or REM. Simple as that.
(gordonjcp, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 20:49, closed)

Mmmmm, nice

(Alfonso Bongo BELL AIRE HORSE EXTRAORDINAIRE, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 20:50, closed)

lololol

( wotofco pissing in your swimming pool, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 21:02, closed)

Both bands were good and genuinely different at one point. But their more recent work is crap and only sells because it's by U2/REM.

Bono make my blood boil. He is held up as something only a bit short of Jesus, with all his preaching about human rights and green issues. If you feel so bad about capitalist USA then don't fucking go on tour there selling fucking T-Shirts and shit that cost a dollar to make. Fuck off back to your Dublin hotel you two faced twat.

If Bono came along and said "I've got shit loads of money and, by Christ, I'm gonna have a lot of fun spending it" then good for him. But don't pretend you're morally superior for doing it.

Rant over
(Bitter and Twisted, Sat 1 Jan 2011, 22:07, closed)

I agree...but..
They are both rather over-rated, but 'massive Jazz freak?'
Jazz music sounds like my pet shop has caught fire.
(kilt101, Sun 2 Jan 2011, 0:48, closed)

Ooh! Look at me! Look at me! I'm so knowledgeable about music! Look at the obscure references I make! Look how superior I am!
Pretentious cunt.
(Romf, Sun 2 Jan 2011, 1:06, closed)

REM have made some good albums
Automatic For The People being one, and Monster is alright (wears thin after a while). They haven't done much since mind you, which means nerly 20 years of songs as insipid as "Daysleeper".

U2 on the other hand have never made one good album - they have a few good songs per album and the rest is banal crap, the like of which Coldply have made a career out of. At the same time, Achtung Baby and Zooropa have some very good songs (The Real Thing, Lemon, Numb, One), and have excellent Brian Eno production, thought both also have poor second halves. Their stageshow for Zoo TV is also one of the most amazing spectacles ever produced in stadium rock. Their post-Pop stuff has been completely uninspired shite though, without even their couple of good songs per album.
(McChinaman banned, Sun 2 Jan 2011, 3:56, closed)

radio 3?
you massive prick.
( janet aylia y'all motherfuckers need jesus, Sun 2 Jan 2011, 8:42, closed)

You sound like a bit of a snob
Nobody who claims to love music can say that Reckoning is a bad album. It's almost infinitely more hummable than the sodding Mahavishnu Orchestra too. What you need, mate, is a holiday in Rockville. Broaden your horizons a bit. There's more to aural life than middle-aged white men fretwanking all the fun out of black party music.
( Scrumper, Mon 3 Jan 2011, 20:44, closed)

i dont like either band
but then again i don't much like you either as you sound like a monumentally pretentious arse.

hope it all works out for you tho.
(hotpiss is very much liking your popping musics, Tue 4 Jan 2011, 10:26, closed)

Context, dear boy.
It's very easy to look back at something twenty-years old with modern eyes and dismiss it, but the early careers of both of these bands were truly ground breaking. More so in the case of REM. At the time they were slogging around small clubs playing guitar-based "alt-rock" to 100 people, the entire European music industry had gone to hell in a Stock-Aitken-Waterman powered shit cart.

Few people in the UK had even heard of REM, let alone anything BY them until their SIXTH studio album, because their tiny indie label IRS didn't even have a distribution deal in Europe.

I agree, their music has dated poorly and current releases are poor.

But that doesn't stop you from being a massive bell-end.
( Linbox has a serious dunk habit, Tue 4 Jan 2011, 17:47, closed)